When I was a child, my family was not actively Christian. My father called himself an atheist, but, actually, he was more agnostic. He was an anomaly in our mostly Southern Baptist community. Everybody wanted to convert Dan Conley. Nobody did.
Nonetheless, from sometimes attendance at my grandmothers’ churches and a little red-lettered Bible my aunt gave me, I grew up with faith. We didn’t much go to church on Sunday morning, but my dolls and I had church in my room. I can’t ever remember the total absence of faith. For me, God was always a factor in my life.
Eventually, my father was baptized, and my adolescence was rich in his explorations of Christian life. My family was actively Christian as I entered adulthood and became Catholic. That’s another story.
But this week, as I read and prayed this Sunday’s readings, my mind has focused on how faith IS a gift.
Wisdom 18:6-9 and Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19
Both the Old Testament reading and the Hebrews selection from epistles remind their readers of the gift of faith.
The book of Wisdom was written in Greek to Jews of the diaspora just a couple of hundred years before Christ. Its purpose was to protect the Jews living within Greek culture from “falling away” from their Jewish heritage and faith. In today’s reading the unknown author reminds his readers of a pivotal event in their cultural journey of faith: the night of the Passover, when the markings in blood made by the Hebrews IN FAITH on their doorposts protected them from the angel of death which visited the Egyptian houses that night. God had told them to do it. In faith, they believed him and obeyed. Then they saw what happened: God delivered them from slavery.
Faith has an element of obedience that is based on trust. What were the Hebrew people in Egypt thinking when they slaughtered the animals for the first Passover and put some of the blood on their doorposts? Whatever they thought, they obeyed. They did what God asked them to do—because God asked them to do it.
The book of Hebrews was written to Jewish Christians, most likely before 70 AD. The goal of Hebrews was to show how Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah.
The selection today recalls Abraham’s faith journey from Ur across the Fertile Crescent to Canaan, as well as the critical incident of when God seemed to ask Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Isaac.
The definition given of faith in the beginning of the reading is classic and deep, “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” The catechism, as it begins its study of the Creed, elaborates: “Faith is man’s response to God, who reveals himself and gives himself to man, at the same time bringing man a superabundant light as he searches for the ultimate meaning of his life” (CCC 26)
The whole beauty of faith—of man’s response to God—is outlined in Chapter Three of Part One of the catechism—paragraphs 142-184. (That sounds like a lot, but it is only 10 pages in the catechism—a nice Sunday afternoon read). Some key concepts include:
Faith is a grace—it is a gift of God. We receive this gift. We don’t initiate it. At the same time, faith is a truly human act. We choose to say “I believe.” This is called “the assent of faith.” We are free to say yes or no to faith, but, for faith to be real, WE MUST SAY YES.
And what do we say yes to? St. Anselm is famous for saying, “Faith seeks understanding.” Faith is beyond reason, but it is compatible with reason—including the reasoning of science.
Faith is also the beginning of eternal life—once we have faith, we enter into relationship with God so we get to know him. Knowing God enables us to begin to be formed to be like God, and being formed to be like God is the beginning of Eternal Life.
That’s all heavy theology, maybe more than you want to consider this Sabbath. But know that it is real theology, considered by saints for centuries and found worthy of trust. It is the faith we assent to.
Luke 12: 32-48
Today’s Gospel follows in Luke after last Sunday’s parable of the rich landowner who wanted to tear down his barns. That was a parable for a man who asked Jesus a question that came from his desire to justify greed. Today, it is as if Jesus is building on what he just said “to the general public” to more accurately describe what he would require of his disciples.
There is a comforting reassurance that is not part of today’s reading (Luke 12: 22-34). In it, Jesus tells his disciples to be very different from the rich, yet foolish, landowner. “Do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat, nor about your body, what you shall put on. For life is more….” (Luke 12:22-23)
This section goes on to describe how God wants to give the disciples the Kingdom, but they must make it their treasure and give it their heart—the beginning of today’s Gospel. What Jesus asks is pretty radical “Sell your possessions, and give alms; provide yourselves with purses (containers of riches) that do not grow old. With a treasure in the heavens that does not fail.”
He then goes on to say that just selling out for God is not enough. Once the decision to give all to God is made, a disciple must see himself/herself as a faithful servant who keeps on being faithful—even if God seems far away, even if a disciple wonders if God, his Master, is ever coming back.
Peter, always the leader, gets it that Jesus is saying something important. Sell possessions? Leave everything and then do God’s will, even if God seems to have gone away?
Jesus sees this as a very teachable moment—for Peter, for us. He says, “Yes, Peter, this parable is for you.” He says, “Yes, Mary, this parable is for you.” To all of us disciples, Jesus says, “Yes, this is the standard for you: Be faithful—believe in what is not seen because of the grace given you, because of what you have seen.”
Applications
I’ve never been without a belief that God is. I have had more than one bout in life when I have doubted if God knew and loved me. I remember one dark, dark night thirty years ago when, at a time of darkness, I reasoned myself to risk faith again. I cried out, “God, you created all people, including me. It is said that you love all you have created, which must include me. Therefore, God, even though you have been absent for a long, long time and my life is out of control, reason leads me to cry out to you: if you are there, if you care, help me!”
God did not come to comfort me that night. He did not come to comfort me with his presence for still some years. But very soon after that, God came to me in a mentor who cared for me, mess that I was. He believed in me, mess that I was. He wasn’t even a man of faith, but he was patient with me when people of faith had turned away. In hindsight, he loved me with God’s love, he reached me with God’s reach, he believed in me and began to re-form me. It took another twenty years for me to return to the assent and assurance of faith I had had as a child, but that night I began my journey back.
Prayer
Lord, what a wonderful thing is the gift of faith! Thank you for the reflections this week about my wandering journey of faith. Thank you for the gift of faith you gave me as a child. Thank you for my father’s conversion. Thank you for finding people who could lead me back to you when I let the troubles of life overwhelm me. And, especially today, thank you for my experiences of doubt and awareness of fragility of faith in dark and troubled times. Thank you for ALL your have given me. Help me give back to you all that I am. Amen.
